Sunday, November 30, 2008

The weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful!

This is the first house that we have a fireplace in. We thought that it would be easy this year to make our house look like Christmas, but it is turning out to be a bit harder than we thought. Maybe it's because our house is twice as large as our old one, so all of our decorations are spread out, and we don't have the concentration of Christmas spirit that we had last year. It could also be that we haven't put up any Christmas lights yet and we are passing on buying a tree since we will be gone for the week of Christmas. This all works out since we are minimalists anyway.

Here are most of the decorations that we have up so far. We might throw up some lights, but besides that, I think this is going to be it.

Here is my olivewood creche that I got in Israel. I think it's beautiful, but I should have been more on the ball in my bargaining for it. I figured out later that Mike on Via Dolorosa in the old city of Jerusalem added about 90 shekels to the price in his conversion from shekels to dollars. In the future I know to haggle in the currency that I will be paying in.

Here are the decorations that we have so far around our fireplace. All we need now is a fire. Todd is trying to convince me to get a giant inflatable snow globe or a singing neon "Merry Christmas" sign for the living room, but those things are super tacky.

Note from Todd: Imagine how sweet these would look right above and right next to our fireplace!